Spare Time

So it's Wednesday night, somewhere near 7:30 p.m. I am sitting here trying to recover from a weekend in Columbus sightseeing and what not. Everyone seems to have had a great weekend at the Castaic Race, and it looks like the guys at Manitou will try to resucitate my beat-down Skareb in an attempt to get me riding at least for the weekend. James was hard at work yelling at someone on a t.v. film-crew set in the Valley, Heidi was trapped in traffic on the coast, and all seems right with the world. I get to baby-sit Beauford this weekend, since his "mom" will be on a mini-vacation. That makes me happy since I don't get to see him as much as I would like to. For the record, he is doing well since all the medical drama a few weeks ago. Everyone should own a big smelly Bassett, it builds character!
The Ohio trip was great. It was so strange to see GREEN plants, and WATER that isn't either the ocean or a reservoir in large quantities. Equally disturbing were the voices and faces in drive-through restaurant windows. Clearly spoken English by people who are in school and DON'T have gold/silver capped teeth may take some getting used to. Oh, and graffitti? There isn't any. I saw one square block of an area called "The Bottoms" where there was a startlingly insignificant amount of spray paint. White folks are the scary ones here, with a disproportionate amount of people who answer the simplest of questions with a clear stream of thickening drool and a blank stare I liken to a Thorazine milkshake chaser. Nothing says "I've never read a book in my life" like a face tattoo. What does one drink to justify a permanent ink-charicature of Yosemite Sam or Daffy-Duck on one's forehead? If Paris Hilton were from the mid-west, would she say "that's hot" from the hardly-attached screen door of her double-wide trailer?
The place was CLEAN. All of it. The watersheds, the lakes, the sides of freeway on-ramps......weird. Makes me wonder what we are doing wrong in CA. Are there not enough "waste-bin awareness" campaigns here in the Golden State? I didn't notice any over abundance of waste receptacles there, so what is making the difference? Oh well, more on that later maybe. People were certainly nice. Porches, I think, have a great deal to do with that. Homes here are too small and dumpy to have front porches anymore, so you never get to spend those balmy So Cal evenings sipping mint-julips and chatting with your neighbors and their kids. Porches stop crime, of that I am convinced. Home invasion robberies drop dramatically when the neighborhood kids grow up seeing the old mountain bike guy sitting on the porch cleaning his shotgun three times a week.
Bike paths were everywhere. There were tons of people commuting by bike. The city layout of Columbus and the surrounding areas are very bike friendly. With only two hundred feet of elevation from the high to low spots, one can cover a great deal of ground in a short period of time. Don Burke and I would OWN this place with our big-asses. The roads are beautiful and winding, rolling along the Sciota and Olentagy ("Old and Dingy") Rivers. You roll through areas like Victorian Village, Grandview, and Bexley. The average home prices here are about $140,00.00. That's for a two story home with a large basement, big yard, and a PORCH! I now understand what drove the Roff's from California.
Ahhh the midwest. No traffic, cheap housing, and clearly intelligable fast-food workers. Why did we as a country ever move West? Oh yeah.....sunlight and seafood. I forgot.